


Here Be Dragons

by alephthirteen



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Cat is a Harper, Dragon Ruts, Dragon!Kara, DragonHybrid!Kara, F/F, F/M, Go Read Dragonriders of Pern, Hot Sex, It has Telepathic Dragons, Just the Occasional Bout of Mad Passion, Knife fights, Never bargain with him on tips, Nia is a Healer, Not Actually an ABO, Secret Witch Nia, Several Whole Alternate Cultures, The Pizza Guy is Some Kind of Fairy, To Translate Medieval Setting with Hints of Sci-Fi in the Distant Past, To a More Straight up Urban Fantasy, Took Many Liberties, Vamp!Alex, Winn is the Pharmacist Brownie, first off
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:34:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26875993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: Dragons were gone.  Faded to memory.  Everyone knew that.  The great beasts who had command of the skies, who fed on raiding thugs and the beasts of the field alike, who shielded the race of men from the vicious, twisting thread that fell from the sky.The last queen passed hundreds of years ago.  The hills of the Mojave hold the last of her clutch, in the great bowl of a dead volcano.  Every now and then someone climbs that rock, into the weyr's bowl and counts them.  There was no choice.  Men had to invent suits of steel, great machines that pumped flame onto the writhing masses of thread.Magic, curiously, has not died.  The Seer's Guild always said that magic was the shadow of the dragons over the earth...-----"Morning, Shockers.  Leslie Willis here, bringing you the dirt.""See, what I'm pissed about is with that plane in the river, we're gonna get some [bleeps] movie.  Everybody lived?  Couldn't some fat [bleep] have the decency to have a [bleep] heart attack?Now we got Tom Hanks inMiracle of Flight 237.  [bleep]horse[bleep].""Hi, caller, you're on the air.""Hi, Leslie.  Longtime listener, first-time caller.  So, did anyone else see that dragon catch the plane?"
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 47
Kudos: 94





	1. Phenotypes and Morphology of Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> The Dragonriders of Pern takes place in a low-tech setting yet one that is clearly influenced by some past civilization. The older castles have walls and hallways cut as smooth as glass, indicating the use of machines to carve them. The curious setting (three moons) suggests it is not earth. Magic is not evident, only dragons and Guilds and so on.
> 
> I took this and warped it so that it hits urban fantasy tropes, though with a milder flavor. Weres and vamps exist but this isn't about their secret war.
> 
> It's basically 21st century America though with key differences.   
> Technology is advancing but traditional magical trades are dominant. Mass-produced tech is trying to breach a monopoly by typically one-off magic shops. Tech exists but the digital world is the cheap substitute for the magical.
> 
> Apple still needs to come up with a killer app to beat an enchanted locket that can create a ghostly image of the person you're talking to. Sure, the iPhone is cheaper than astral projection lockets but mom can't you hug over it.
> 
> Walgreens is on the skids, bleeding money and not able to compete with pixies and brownies at the local apothecary who can look at a patient, take a sniff, and prescribe the exact potion needed in trade for a secret, like neighborhood gossip or grandma's recipe. 
> 
> The construction industry is pulling ahead of the sorceresses at long last because while they can't raise a building of steel, gold and transparent quartz in three days, the casters have difficulty focusing on fusing girders past 50 stories up.
> 
> A vampire or ghost conductor in a subway car can glamour the riders into sleep until they arrive. Makes a packed freeway and the cars to drive on it seem so unpleasant.
> 
> The military hopes to break the nation's reliance on the witches, liches, and constructs in the militia of the Daughters of Plymouth but first, they must come up with something more effective than one woman who can feed an army of terrorists to a horde of skeletons or whip them away with a sandstorm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terms:
> 
> Melded - A term for any individual who impressed on a dragon egg, forming a lifelong telepathic bond. They lived as long as their dragons did and if or when the dragon perished, they would rapidly succumb to seizures. Some rode, some did not. Magical individuals who melded shared their gifts with the dragons as time went on and the dragons, in turn, allowed the caster to channel vastly more power.
> 
> Riders - Melded individuals who also rode the dragons in defense of thread or in raids against bandits attacking the tithe caravans or the feeder cattle.
> 
> Thread - A microbial fungus that forms mobile, twisting threads of twitching material when inside the atmosphere. Upon impacting organic matter, it strips humans to bone in seconds nad spreads across entire fields of crops in minutes.
> 
> Weyr - A series of fortresses in extinct volcanos operated by the Dragonrider's Order, housing and nesting dragons and surviving on donated herds, crops and gold from nearby kingdoms they protected.

#  **_Notes on the Purposes of Dragons_ **

#  _Dr. Jeremiah Danvers_

This work is dedicated to my beloved wife, Dr. Eliza Danvers, whose more practical trade of mundane medicine and cooler, kinder head made months of translation possible. Also to my daughter Alex who taught this old man to accept all creatures that walk our Earth.

What we know of dragons comes from those who lived with them. Modern science had not arisen when the last dragon of Malibu weyr, the great silver queen Alura, passed, cut down by thread over what we now call Mexico City. That being said, a culture so dependent on these creatures has no reason to lie and multiple sources affirm this.

Requests to use non-invasive mundane techniques to analyze the remaining eggs in Malibu Weyr were denied, so we cannot speak to what dragons are in these unusually large, seemingly unhatched clutch.

###  **Female Dragons:**

**Gold** \- Massive fertile female. Apex predator. Nest founders. Capable of laying clutches of dozens and large enough to destroy a falling cloud of thread or defend her nest against armies with a single breath of flame these rare beasts formed the backbone of the old weyr system. Likely, tithes arose partly in gratitude and partly for fear nobles might meet such creatures on the battlefield should they refuse.

_Astra "Blackfang" the founder of In-Ze weyr -- now popularly known as Malibu weyr -- was measured to be as long as forty men lying boot-to-head (240 feet). with a wingspan of 90 men arranged similarly (540 feet)._

**Silver** \- Slender for a fertile female type. Silvers seemed to occupy some unique niche. Closer to 80 feet long and with a wingspan of 160 feet, these laid far smaller clutches but it seems only silvers could lay the eggs of the gold queens. Notoriously randy, they kept packs of brown and bronze males for their pleasure and their riders or melded humans kept harems of men and women alike.

_Alura "Stormeyes" In-Ze, the other founder of the In-Ze weyr, hatched from the same egg as Astra. She was silver and most of the queen-eggs ever laid there were hers._

**Blue** \- Mid-size, female but infertile. Close to a brown in size at 120 feet in length, 240 feet of wingspan, occupying the "golden combination" of wings and body length.

**Green** \- Smallest breed, female but infertile. With a wingspan of 60 feet, length of 20 feet. Barely large enough to take a rider but exceptionally nimble and well suited to endurance fighting against the thread. 

###  **Male Dragons:**

**Bronze -** Largest male, virile and fertile. Seemingly, these evolved for the express purpose of fertilizing Gold and Silver queens. With a length of roughly 160 feet and a wingspan of 400, these had unusually massive bones and deep wings from leading bones to spars. This seemed to be an adaptation to allow them to slow the descent of a queen golden in heat. Witnesses say that unlike browns, Gold took the bronzes from _below,_ letting their mates slow their fall from the icy stratosphere long enough to fertilize them. Also, the only accounts of ground-mating were Bronze-Silver and Bronze-Golden.

_Notable examples include Zor-El, mate of Alura who many reports had unusually sharp, watchful eyes. The extent of dragon intelligence is unknown but it seems to be of at least a primate level and possibly, based on the rider's journals of their shared minds, even a human level._

**Brown** \- Smaller male, approximately fifty percent fertile. Ranged wildly in size from comparable to a green to large enough to mate a gold without crashing to Earth in a clatter of broken bones.

_Last recorded example was the late Non, mate of Astra._

###  **Mythical or Unconfirmed:**

**Red -** Unusually dangerous, small, seemingly hermaphroditic. Found primarily in texts of blood-magic sorceresses and as such, quite possibly a myth to terrify curious townsfolk. Said to have been 'enough for a witch, should she watch her butter, they were small enough only the lightest of riders could accompany them. Found primarily in texts of blood-magic sorceresses and as such, quite possibly a myth to terrify curious townsfolk. Some diaries suggest that their melded's magical abilities transferred over time.

**White -** Peaceable **,** tiny, believed to have been gender-changing. Unable to carry a rider without extensive strength exercises, a handful of ancient reports suggest some hamlets took them in as protective spirits to protect farm and flock. They trained them with small girls or young women who walked the dragon through numerous years of hard labor until it could carry a rider.

**"Chromatic" and "Stripers"** \- Various legends exist of blood-magic sorceresses fusing their bodies _and_ minds with their melded dragons, creating a dragon-human hybrid. Given the immense power such a being would possess: a sorceress's mind and dark gifts, a dragon's immense physical strength and durable bones, scales, and teeth, it is highly unlikely such beings existed. To put it bluntly, if a golden and a witch had fused in this way a thousand years ago, it would be a god in all but name. We would all be worshipping it to this very day.


	2. The Fall of the Dragons

# The Fall of the Beasts and the Rise of Man

#### Lex Luthor, son of Lionel, out of Lillian.  
(former) Duke of Metropolis Head of Luthor Industries  
**(transcribed from a speech at the Mankind First Party national convention)**

The dragons will return! That's what our leaders shriek! We should wait, they say! We mere mortals who would see _our_ age begin!

We should wait! Why should we put faith in our minds, the sweat of our labors, the product of our brilliance? Why should men live as men!

For thousands of years, dragons kept us safe! Kept us safe, and kept us for sheep!

We farmed! We sweated! We died of exhaustion! We paid taxes to animals no smarter than a rat! The dragons flew and we cowered! Praying that they could keep the thread from our farms! Our homes! Our families!

No More!

Join me! 

I saw we go into that weyr and slay the last of those beasts! Join me! Have a little courage and the age of Men and Steel can begin!

Dragons are gone!

Elves are cheats, Fairies are no better than thieves! They are filth!

Vampires take your sons and daughters like a butcher bleeding a cow!

Why should we listen to leaders who only wait for someone else? Who coddle all they rule except humans?

No. Men of America...we take back our country. 

Tonight!


	3. Alex I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magical beings -- with the exception of massive beasts like dragons -- can be born to human couples, and often are. Approximately 90 of every 100,000 live births to human-only partners are non-humans like pixies, brownies, vamps, witches and in some cases full blood _sidhe_ thought he Changeling theory is still preferred.
> 
> Alex's parents were human but she is a _vakza_ , one of the more common and weaker breeds of vampires. Vakza possess a heartbeat, warm blood and most biological processes typical of humans. In fact, they can process human food normally and derive pleasure, if not sustenance, from mundane food. No other breed is known to do that.
> 
> Their circulating blood under the skin protects them from drying out and as such they do not suffer from sunlight. Their glamour is unusually strong for a minor vampire, probably because those who could not deceive their hunters died out. They are able to turn victims but their weaker, almost-human bodies tend to lead to human lifestyle. There's no easy way to determine if the vampiric infants they welcome into their lives are born vampires, are turned at birth, or were rescued from unfit parents. Their ability to blood-nurse an infant and their normal -- if highly irregular menstrual-- cycle suggests they are fertile.
> 
> Unlike the vicious, powerful "iron fanged" _strigori_ or the lovely, fast and thirsty _rujat_ and other the "elder" vampires, the _vazka_ do not possess superstrength, superspeed, or the ability to fly. They are agile, strong, fast, keen-eyed and charismatic but not much more so than an exceptional human, like an Olympic athlete or martial artist might be. Even fully glutted, the present at only one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty percent of ordinary human limits, a gap that is shrinking as professional athletics reaches newer heights. The only exception is quicker healing than a human, which can still be overwhelmed by mass trauma.
> 
> They are easy prey for hunters and bigots during purges. Despite ceasing to age in appearance at the typical "silver-fox sixty" point -- distinguished by silver hair and in rare cases, a wrinkle or two, they meet violent ends and as such the oldest known example lived only to 83.

**Alex Danvers**

Alex's phone is ringing.

The woman she's with -- Maggie -- clutches her head and tries to pull her back. 

"Stay," she croaks. "Feels so _good_ with you inside me. It's like...god!...it's like I'm a guitar and you're playing me."

_Been a long time since I met a fang-banger._

She is sweat-slicked and fragrant with her own arousal, arching her neck to Alex's jaws and presenting caramel skin that Alex longs to dot with bites and bruises. Each draw of blood brings a mewling whine and a fresh stutter of her naked hips against the front of Alex's jeans.

Her blood is like honey and cinnamon and she's gushed so much into Alex's clothing that she'd be dehydrated if she _hadn't been fed_ for most of the night.

Alex pulls her fangs back and Maggie whines at the click of bone on bone. She takes one of the scarves Eliza taught her to knit and dips it into the apothecary's tonic. She coils it around Maggie's neck, covering the wound.

Maggie flops, formless and panting back onto the blankets.

"That..." Maggie gulps. "Was some unreal revenge sex."

She flops her hand randomly on the bed until Alex takes it.

"Come back, huh? I told my precinct captain I was taking the whole week as care leave."

"Week, huh?" Alex chuckles. "You don't have that much blood, fun-size."

"Oh, I know. Moon starts waxing tomorrow night anyway, so your bloodlust won't last long. I just want some old-fashioned _lesbian_ action."

She drags her palms around Alex's biceps, tickling her fingertips over the flannel.

"Just pass me that tray of orange juice and cookies and come back, OK?" Maggie pleads. "Don't glamour me. No tricks. Talk to me like my woman, not my vampire. make me _believe_ you'll come back."

Alex presses a bloody-lipped kiss to Maggie's forehead. 

"Always, Maggie."

She presses the orange juice and crazy expensive cookies -- vegan cookies are a pain in the ass to get in vampire-friendly shops -- and watches Maggie tear into them.

"Best first date ever," Maggie moans around a mouthful, scattering crumbs in the sheets.

Kate Kane may be a _rujat_ , rich and famous. She might be one of rarest and mightiest of the vamp breeds and heiress to a line stretching back to Salome herself who drained whole Roman legions in the middle east long before the birth of Christ. 

She's also a broken-fanged idiot because _she_ _let Maggie go_ and Alex plans to never make that mistake.

Alex unlocks her phone and calls the 'unknown number' back.

"Danvers."

"It's Vasquez."

A chorus of female voices mumbles disapproval at the other end. Three at least.

"How do you manage to get more pussy than an _igni sidhe_ empress, Vas? It's terrifying," Alex teases.

"I'm magic. Boss wants us. Got a call. Something in the warehouse district. Big emergence, we think. Magical creature or else a caster with some real chops. J'onn sounded terrified."

_And Formless Men do not spook easily._

"I felt it too," Alex admits. "I'm not high sensitivity but it was like a flashbang going off inside my head."

Vas can be heard struggling into her pants.

"Shooting you the address. Load up. Gold and silver knives, runesteel hammer. The revolvers. J'onn said to look like we aren't an easy snack but play nice. Hope we don't have to draw. One human and one baby-dyke baby-vamp will get _smeared_ by whatever this is if we piss it off."

"I object to that! I'm all growed up. Lost my baby fangs and everything."

Vas snorts.

"Yeah, but you ain't a vampire until you're gay, you cretin."

\-----

Vasquez is waiting for her in the Hummer, idling silently on the street. Rather than risk explosive gasoline, they paid an obscene sum to a caster on 63rd and Hunter to replace the engines with lightning-runed stones floating in a chainmail bottle and put electric engines at each wheel. Has almost twice the horsepower of the gas guzzlers.

"She cute?" Vas asks before Alex gets a 'hi' in.

"Morning to you too, _Lieutenant_. Who?"

"Apologies, _Captain."_

If Vas hadn't poured her drunk messy ass into taxis a dozen times in the last three months alone, Alex might care that she's ranking and Vasquez is a sassy little shit of a junior officer.

"The Latin number you dragged from the wyrdfolk bar last night. You were on her so fast I thought maybe you were blurring. LIke maybe you are a _rujat_ who'd been leading me on."

Vasquez taps her fingers on the gearshift as she slides into traffic.

"Wouldn't blame you. Elder vamps get a bad rap."

"Just a warm-blooded, blue-clitted little vamp, Vas, promise."

Vas chuckles.

"So tell me what we _do know,"_ Alex sighs. "about the newbie."

"Not much. Fairly standard rampage for a nest-builder monster. No serious injuries. Insurance will cover most of the losses. A couple of full-sized butchered cows stolen from an artisanal shop. Whole ass cow. Snapped the chains like string. Bed Bath and Beyond basically gutted in LA which we _think_ was related. A couple of missing person reports last night, all within one hour. No blood at the scenes though."

"Taken away but not dinner. That's comforting. Pattern?"

"Yeah, kind of. Schoolteacher, homeless person, stripper, someone they wouldn't tell me the name of. So nothing there _._ Unmarried females. _Hot ones._ "

"That's unsettling," Alex groans. "None of the usual suspects, though. Elder vamps wouldn't lower themselves to Bed Bath and Beyond pillows for a nest. Minotaurs are rut, squirt and leave types and we'd have the girls. Leaking like a jelly-filled donut and hurting, but alive. Demon would have hijacked CatCo to declare we pitiful humans its subjects. Loup garou..."

Vas nods, jaw set tight. The silver dust embedded in the scar on her forehead still twinkles.

"Loup garou leave a splatter pattern, not empty beds. Huge power surge. We thought it was the crash in the river when it clipped that substation. Seems it wasn't. When this emerged, it blew out streetlights for six blocks -- that's how we have a location -- and Reynolds blacked out. We got tipline calls of 'a presence' and a couple walk-ins, including a _luna sidhe_ healer we work with. Staggering like she'd gone eight rounds with Muhammad Ali. We've got her stashed in a bed in the barracks. She keeps it on the down-low that she's neighborhood watch so she asks that we sneak her out."

"Reynolds okay?" Alex asks.

He's a good agent and he was invaluable in the field. Once he realized he was a seer, the higher-ups put him on desk duty and hiked his pay past the Directors just so they had a precognitive caster on payroll with proven loyalty, a swank apartment, and no one likely to give a better offer.

"Yeah. They're bringing Reynolds out of the coma tonight. Protective measure. They wanted the muscles in his face to relax. Clenched up so hard he sprained them."

"Shit."

Vas nods.

"We're about two minutes out. Gear check."

Alex slides her knives out one a at time, looking for divots or cracks in the soft metal. Every single Sentinel and Vengeance rune is clean, defined and intact on the silver-played knife and the Death and Justice runes on the gold are just as well defined. Her runesteel hammer -- a twelve-pounder with a longer than average shaft -- is her go-to because she knows it like she knows her right arm. Like all field agents, she carved it in her final class in combat magic. The enchanter put the magic in but it's _hers_ and that makes her feel safe. She pulls out the gigantic revolvers, spinning each to make sure the chambers move smoothly.

Semiautomatiucs would mean _clips_ and that means inflexible ammo load-outs and shooting a chupacabra with a glass-shelled acid round is like handing it a steroid injection. Longer barreled and far heavier caliber than ordinary civilian pistols, it takes months to learn how to shoot one and even then, a mistake in how she grabs the pneumatically-assisted grip put her in the sickbay with a ruined wrist when the recoil hits.

She closes her armor-lined trenchcoat back over the holsters and sheaths.

"What you loaded with?" Vasquez asks.

"Silver dust on Moe," Alex admits. "High explosive on Larry. We're not sure."

"Hey," Vas laughs. "No shame. Rookie tactics count in a shitstorm. Still can't believe you named your pistols and your hammer after the Three Stooges."

"We're here."


	4. Lena I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Lena begins to question the Luthor family orthodoxy.

**Lena Luthor**

She was in her office at two in the morning like any sane woman would be, yawning over her laptop when the wall disappeared beside her and every light fixture shorted out at once. This large, mostly-woman-like shadow walked towards her and she heard it scenting the air in great gulps. It stopped a few feet away, like it was waiting on her. Science got the better of her and she reached out to touch it, see what it felt like through the dark that hid it.

The moment her hand contacted what felt like scales, she was wrapped in powerful limbs and it took to the sky, breaking yet another wall to bits and protecting Lena from debris with its own body. Covering her face with a hand when she shrieked after a look down, hiding the heights so she couldn't be scared of them. Then she was hauled to a cold, dark space and dropped onto a stack of pillows so deep and easy to sink into it might have been taller than she is. The last thing she remembers is pitch blackness, feeling her body lifted and the pillows rearranged until she was shoved gently back down while the creature that took her rumbled rhythmically deep in its chest until she fell asleep.

Now it's daytime. She can actually look around. Her pillow mountain that seems to be a product of dumping a home furnishings store through the hole in the roof of a warehouse. Stacks of DIY furniture are in a heap, some of it clearly ruined. Lena's suit jacket is ruined but the blouse, vest, and skirt are still pristine. Three other women are here and unlike Lena they seem to have been stripped naked and thoroughly fucked. None of them look injured -- even brused -- and one is grinning and drooling into her pillow, face down with her ass stuck up in the air.

Over in another corner, crouched down and watching the sky intently, is a dragon. Or a woman. Or between. 

Dragons are wicked. Ask anyone she knows.

Though, she supposes, people she knows consist only of Lillian, Lex and her assistant, Jess. Lillian was campaigning for dragon extermination before it was clear the last eggs in Malibu weyr weren't viable. Lex made his presidential ambitions hinge on hate for anything _except_ humans.

Jess is such a good assistant because she's brilliant but also because she's a banshee. She's a dear friend, after so many years. Jess has many great qualities. Interest in politics or opinions of things that happened long after she died are not among them. Ghosts, wraiths, banshees nad other 'specter races' are sought after as personal assistants and quite literally will work for housing. Banshees especially have perfect memory and impeccable sense of the passage of day and night. Jess' particular nature as one who announces and portends death means she has the ability to sense human lives around her. She can tell if someone's soul in the building is fading and call 911 before Joe in Accounting knew he was having a heart attack. She can feel is someone does not belong. Especially if death -- or the intent to murder Lena -- is gathering itself to them. 

Able to tell Lena the time and what is on her calendar by rote memory and a glance out the window. Able walk through the wall with an immaterial sack of junk food or conjure a coffee on Lena's desk while remaining unseen by the assholes on the board. 

Phantasmal food isn't filling but it's tasty and Lena doesn't have to remember to call a takeout place. Jess makes sure to take solid form, drag her out and ply her with _real_ food daily at any rate.

Jess is beyond starved for gossip on Lena's lack of a personal life and drags her to the bar every other weeknight, pointing at this girl or that one and passing her hand through Lena's drink to keep it icy. She kicks Lena's ass at Karaoke with that eerie, spine-tingling lilt of hers and tries to lock the full power of her song on someone she thinks Lena needs to hit on. Someday she needs to get Jess' actual opinion on topics other than wing-womaning. Wing-ghosting. Whatever.

Her childhood makes her current predicament all the more confusing. Living under their protection tricked humans into stagnation, or so Lex claims. They would rip her limb from limb for sport, let alone for a snack.

Except last night was hunted down and whisked away by a dragon-like creature that, she realizes, waited for _her_ to approach _it_ and this morning she doesn't have a bruise on her. It somehow managed to unbutton her slacks and blouse partway so that they wouldn't _rip_ for God's sake. Her back is stiff but that's the too-hard memory pillow jammed in it. The beast even laid down within her and sang her what it must have thought was a lullaby.

Now she has to reconcile that strange unplanned slumber party with the creature now that she can see it.

As her third-grade art textbook was keen to point out in describing the color wheel, are _solid_ colored. They have four legs arranged much like dogs with long tails with spiked tips and claws rather than hands.

This one is blue-scaled, dark as sapphire and just as shiny as a polished gem. It is also _multicolored_ with some scales far paler blue, some almost purple and the wings are nearly entirely red. It stands and walks like a human.

It's not fully human, it's not fully dragon. 

It's not a cosplayer, Lena knows that much. Cosplayers can't take her office wall out with their bare hands, yank her out of her heels and fly off with her. Cosplayers can't lift her with one big hand around the wrists and one curled over her hip to support her to carry her over to this nest of pillows -- some of them with the plastic still on -- and lay her down in them. Cosplayers can't pass their fist through LexCorp's toughest armored glass like it was a cloud of steam or suspend a side of beef with their bare hand and breath white-hot fire on it until it's sizzling and spitting. It looked _delicious_ and the other women she took seemed to agree, falling on it like starving mutts as the dragon leaned back and waited for them to be full before downing the rest of the carcass with terrifying ease.

She thinks it is a woman or at least the female version of whatever it is.

Between the hourglass figure, those frankly _unfair_ tits and the pale pink slit peeking from her peeled-back pelvic scales, she certainly _looks_ more like a female.

It's as if someone put the old paintings of a blue dragon and a photo of a nude in a photo morph app, put the slider three-quarters of the way towards the woman and told it to blend them. The jaw is longer and broader than women's usually are and the cheekbones stand out like knives on either side of her skull, making her cheeks look gaunt merely by the swoop. It's somewhere in between a mid-century movie stars chiseled jaw and muzzle. The teeth within are white as sugar and less terrifying than Lena feared. The lips are damp and shiny but look more like muscle than the fleshy softness of a human's.

Lena can _almost_ imagine kissing them.

The beast stands about ten feet, Lena thinks. Broad-hipped and broad-shouldered and all of it clad in heavy muscle but with a womanly shape to the pelvis with a narrow waist. Her hands have no claws and the scales there are tiny, pale sky blue rather than the indigo, mirror-bright shine of her body's scales. The feet are armored in heavier scales and the toenails _are_ talon-like, black and hooked. Two more claws jut out from the ankle joint, probably to let it grip a perch when combined with the five ordinary 'toes' on the other side of the foot.

The wings seem to emerge from what would in a human be the bottom of the shoulder blades and when the beast turns to track a noise, Lena sees the back muscles to back up their flight. Her wings are even darker blue at the bones and the joints but the flaps between are crimson. Like a dragon's wings, they are made up of tiny scales -- small as a butterfly's scales -- and they shimmer when the light catches them. When folded up behind her and combined with her stiff, gleaming scales, they almost looked like a cape attached to an armored knight. A strange, rune-like symbol appears on her chest when she breathes fire, golden and so bright Lena needed to squint. When it's done, the outline remains in a pale line of scales. The tail is relatively short, long enough to reach over her shoulder and around to the middle of her chest or to wrap around her ankles a few times. It is rooted above a _terrifyingly_ muscular pair of glutes capped by deep dimples of Venus that Lena could put her hands on without spilling past them. The tail ends in a plump cylindrical tip with a flare at the far one end. The tip of the tail is bare, not scaled, and seems to be made of obsidian or volcanic glass heated from a roiling flame that can be seen within.

Clearly, with the rune on her chest and the tail of glass with caged fire inside, this animal is more spellwork than biology. 

Spells are not the purview of feral dragons.

Where she should have a crown of spiked bones, she has a few swept back, butter-colored, shiny horns that go straight up and curl in like a mountain sheep, piling on top of her head almost a blonde woman with her hair in a bun.

This creature is a chromatic dragon if Lex's notes are accurate. Some sorceress and some blue dragon signed a dark pact and this is the result. Bigger than a human but tiny even compared to the perhaps-mythical white dragons and able to walk and speak like a person. If her breath is any indication, hot enough to turn steel girders into _vapor_ , not just slag, she's made as much of magical power as of flesh and blood.

The dragon, creature, woman, whatever, walks past Lena and past the sleeping redhead she's with -- high school science teacher, she told Lena when she snuggled in for Lena's body warmth -- and past the coppery-skinned woman she stole from under the overpass. She walks up to the petite blonde, lips drawn back in a fanged grin and orange heat growing in the club of her tail.

The blonde must have felt the floor shake. She stirs in the sweat and juice-stained nest of pillows she's in and lifts her head. Salt-slicked blonde ringlets stick to her cheek. She smiles at her shoulder over the beast and then raises her fucking ass in the air like she wants it _inspected_ for ripeness. This woman, who looks like she's fucked so hard she might not even be able to _detect_ a human male any longer isn't resigned to her fate. Isn't fearful. She's horny and willing to go again.

_How much did I drink last night? Did Jess have me try that pot chocolate?_

"Hmm," she croaks. "Go easy, baby. I think I'll pop like a filled balloon if you shoot any more in me."

The dragon stops stalking towards her.

"Roll," it huffs. "Roll on back." It pronounces English well enough after a few repetitions and the voice is deep and rough, like gravel being poured into a wheelbarrow. She feels like a bag of shiny pennies is jangling around low in her belly and it piques enough curiosity for her to put the effort into listening.

"Yes, dear."

The blonde rolls over and Lena can see her much-used slit, cherry-red and swollen and spread wide enough that even ten feet away, Lena can see the glint of the dragon's shiny come in the back. Their combined juices flow in a gradual river, staining the gray sheets below her. It's not human come, that's for sure. Shiny. Not uniform, either, it's more like thousands of tiny pebbles wrapped in syrup or gel or something. Once they leave the warmth of a body, they dissolve quickly into the chilly air. 

There is a small belly bump where the not-yet dissolved--jizz berries? dragon pebbles?--the _whatever_ makes her womb bulge. It's not as big or as firm looking as before. Probably dissolving slower there for better effect.

"Taste you."

Massive hands scoop under the blonde's butt and lift her. The beast doesn't even really sit down. Just _kneels_ and lifts her cunt to her mouth until only the woman's shoulders and head are touching the pillows.

A tongue that really makes Lena wonder about some things snakes out of the beast's mouth. Broader and thicker than some men's cocks, and dark, dark red and it looks so _smooth_ and it flutters and flicks and _struggles_ until it is shoved into the blonde's dripping hole and she wails and bucks.

It goes on for a while.

If she still had her phone, she could have timed it. Hit the lap button every time the blonde shrieked and sagged when she came.

If she still had her phone, she could call Jess. She thinks her captor would let her go. Knows it, somehow.

If she left, she wouldn't be watching a stranger getting what looks like world-class oral from a ten-foot-tall dragon woman, her juices and the dragon's black, syrupy jizz trickling down the beast's chin in slimy rivulets. The beast growling and huffing and _enjoying itself_ while the blonde's hands fist the ruined pillows under her and she wraps her legs around the creature's neck to keep its mouth on her.

Lena finds herself wishing she knew what it was to have feelings.

She's a Luthor. How is she to know if this is _disgust_ or _jealousy_ she's feeling?

There's a slamming noise and a door near the end of the building flies open.

Two women, clad in all-black trenchcoats that are too clean and too shiny to _not_ be enchanted, stride out. Each is wearing an embossed silver sigil or badge of some kind.

The dragon's head lifts off the woman's sex and she huffs, scenting the air.

"New," she growls.

She deposits the gasping, still-quaking blonde back in the pillows, lowering her slowly and like she were made of cotton balls.

"Mate rest," she commands.

"Mmm...yeah," the blonde babbles. "Thanks, pretty girl."

The dragon walks back towards Lena, never taking her eyes off the intruders. She turns away from Lena breathes a short puff, a warning, and the women stop in their tracks when the bricks of the ceiling start to drip. Sweat pours from Lena's skin and she _isn't afraid_ because the beast turned away and leaned up to breathe so everything but the residual heat was safely away from her.

It kneels down beside her.

"Come."

"Me?"

The dragon nods. Its eyes are pale blue and seem _gentle_ somehow and her big, toothy smile splits her whole face and somehow it gives the impression of a little kid.

"Queen. You good queen. Queen defend nest. Nest," it repeats, gesturing with a wing to the dingy warehouse. You, queen. Me, queen. You strong. Strong like me."

"Oh, fuck."


	5. Alex II

**Alex Danvers**

Alex needed coffee before she dealt with this. Honestly, she needed more than that. She needed three straight days fucking Maggie, sipping whenever she'd let her have blood and tasting her on her fingers and her tongue whenever she was recovering. Switching from the neck to the sweet, sweet veins in the thigh that feed the heated blood to a woman's cunt. The ones where lust makes the blood candy sweet.

It isn't as though Noonan's sells coffee that makes you ready for this grade of weaponized bullshit.

The dragon-woman hybrid thing and the brunette with it are about ten paces away. She's a well-coiffed woman wearing a suit that probably costs more than the Hummer did before modifications.

"That's a dragon," Vas hisses. "Right?"

"Chromatic, I think. Hybrid. My dad had some notes I helped him transcribe."

"But it's also a woman."

"Kinda, yeah. About all we know is they were fused. We didn't know they existed. No two stories the same. Some said they were con men. Witches and casters who could breathe fire, others said they were, well, that. Others said they could shift from human to dragon to hybrid. All the old legends agree on is that they were the best of both worlds. We assumed they never existed because just one would be powerful..."

"We'd all be speaking draconic?" Vas teases.

"Yeah."

"Spear me in the ass without lube," vas mutters. "Is that..."

"Lena Luthor, yeah."

"And she's the only one it took still wearing clothes," Vas points out.

Alex chuckles.

"It, Vas? It?"

"Ok, fine. I'm still _processing,_ baby dyke. I could lose my whole arm in that if I fisted her."

"Down girl," Alex scolds. "No fucking the subjects."

"She's only a subject until we close the investigation," Vas reminds her. 

Rather than sink into trying to talk Vasquez _out_ of fucking something, Alex decides to try this diplomacy thing she's heard about.

"Hello!" she hollers out.

Lena makes a hand waving gesture to say she can come over. As they approach, one of the dragon's wings curls around Lena, hiding all but her face and her right foot behind scales that could probably stop a high explosive round. Dragon scales are harder the smoother they are and those are so smooth Alex could check her reflection in them.

"Introductions seem to be in order," Lena chuckles. "Put my, ah, _new roommate_ at ease."

"No take queen," the dragon rumbles. "She mine. Me hers."

"No take mates," she adds, flicking her tail towards three women scattered on, sure enough, the entire contents of a Bed Bath and Beyond. "Need mates for hatching. For warm. For queen happy. Need queen..."

She leans down and huffs, taking such a draw of Lena's scent that some of Lena's hair ends up tangling in her lips. Lena Luthor laughs. Lena Luthor, the world's most famously terrifying erotic nightmare of a businesswoman, practically _giggles_ at the beast's interest in her hair.

"Queen teach hatchlings. Lead nest."

"Do dragons usually talk?" Vasquez whispers out of one side of her mouth.

"New thing," Alex hisses back.

"Are they usually poly? Usually lesbians?"

"How the fuck should I know?" Alex snaps.

"No hurt. Me no hurt. No want fight. Keep nest. You go," the beast tells them, waving a talon-less but still terrifyingly _big_ left hand at the door. "You go make you nest. Nest other place."

Alex sighs.

"Captain Alex Danvers, Department of Extraordinary Occurrences."

"DEO?" Lena asks. "I thought it was a black helicopter, right-wing fever dream."

"Less black helicopters," Alex jokes, spreading her trenchcoat. The dragon doesn't bat an eye at her weapons, even though it's enough ordinance to bring down a pit demon. "More collaring loose werewolves and taking them to a shelter, wrangling drunk _aquaria_ _sidhe_ tourists who crash beach weddings. So on."

"And investigating a magic surge last night that knocked every mage and seer and remotely magic sensitive person for five hundred miles right on their ass."

The dragon huffs.

"Metal bird was crashing. Soft hatchling. Pink. Child!" the beast realizes, sounding _very_ pleased with herself. 

"Child screams," she tells Alex, much quieter and smaller than before. "No want screams. Me broke egg. Me flew. Me save metal bird."

Alex blows out a long breath.

"So, we're going to have to send a dive team to demo the wreck, agreed? Can't have obvious dragon breath burns on the fuselage."

"Agreed," Vasquez groans.

"Ms. Luthor, is there anything you need? You're an adult, you're uninjured and you seem to be consenting. You're clearly not at threat from...this creature. You are free to stay."

Lena sighs.

"Stay," the dragon pleads.

_God, now it's like a puppy begging for a treat. She. Gotta remember that bit._

"What is your name?" Alex asks. 

Easier to see it as something _like_ a person if she has a name.

"N-a-m-e?" the dragon asks, rolling a dark tongue around the word.

"Not know that."

Lena pats the inside flap of the wing protecting her. Armored forehead wrinkling in concern, the dragon relents and opens its wing.

"Me. Lena."

Lena points at Alex.

"She...Alex."

"She..."

"Susan Vasquez."

Lena nods.

"She...Susan."

"God, no. Vasquez."

Lena frowns.

"I'm doing first contact language routines meant for _aliens_ with a magical creature no one knew existed. Preferred pronouns _tomorrow,_ ladies."

"Sorry, ma'am."

"She," Lena says, patting her own throat.

"She...Lena."

She places her palms, both of them, on the dragon. One splayed against the upper curve of indigo-scaled breasts and one on the sinews of the forearm.

"She?"

"Kara," the dragon rumbles.

"Nice to meet you, Kara," Lena murmurs.

"That name?"

"That name," Lena replies.

"Me name Kara," she growls, dipping that massive head.

Alex whistles. The dragon's big blue eyes dart around, looking for the songbird it thinks broke in.

"You just taught her what a name is?"

Lena nods.

"I think she has full command of draconic. She talks in her sleep. Hunting, mating, so on, and she can attach those immediately to English because, well, _humans do those things_ and the rest, things like 'the' and 'your' and 'name' and verb tenses and all the other words we use to be specific, she doesn't have a way to know those."

"Huh."

Lena presses a kiss to the inside of a wingflap.

"I have a company to run, dear. I have to go before Lex takes it from me."

"Lex?" Kara grumbles. 

The grumble grows into a growl, then a snarl, then a growing light behind the teeth that has Alex and Vasquez sidestepping to be out of the path of the flame.

"Lex hurt nest. Kill others."

The wing coils down tight enough around Lena that she gasps, struggling to breathe in the constricted confines.

"Me..."

Lena stalls, trying to put together a simple enough sentence.

"Lex hurt me. Hurt Lena. Want hurt Lex," she tells Kara.

"Good. Queen Lena brave. Queen Lena fly. Hurt Lex."

She releases Lena.

"Sun hides. Come back before sun hide," Kara pleads.

"I promise, my strange friend."

"Agents, might I beg a ride to the nearest Apple store? I need to reach my assistant before Lex activates some bizarre part of the corporate charter. My phone has a..."

She holds up a top-of-the-line, vanity model gold iPhone with a dragon-finger-sized hole clean through it.

"Cracked screen."

"Someone wanted me to _sleep_ and she screened my calls."

Vasquez chuckles.

A sudden squeal of tires on the highway outside makes Kara jump up, taking Lena with her as she glides over to the hole her impact ripped in the wall.

"No like," she grumbles. "Metal eggs noisy."

She lands carefully, keeping Lena out of the sweep of her wings even as Lena's hair is carried up and whipped around like a goddamned shampoo commercial.

She stomps back over to Alex.

"Me go. Kara go. Lena go. Kara help hurt Lex. Alex friend?"

Alex nods.

"Friend."

Kara flicks her tail at the sleeping women.

"Friend Alex show me. Friend Alex keep mates no hurt. After. Show mates no hurt when sun lies down. Mates no hurt? We friend."

Vasquez snickers.

"She drives a hard bargain."

"I probably _should_ check them," Alex sighs. "They look like minotaur victims, except..."

"Except minotaur victims don't _squirt all over the damn place_ and pass out with dopey smiles and open legs to speed up round two," Vasquez reminds her.

"This is true."

"No hurt," Kara growls.

Alex holds up her hands.

"No hurt. Make mates..."

Alex sighs. She has to get Kara's vocabulary up above 200 words or she's going to have real trouble taking a statement.

"Make know mates strong. For strong hatching."

"Good," Kara huffs. "Strong mate good."

"We go."

Kara spreads her wings and with a gradual crackling of shrinking bones, the wings disappear inside her.

"Fucking hell," Vasquez whispers.

Her face becomes more shallow, the muzzle receding into an ordinary jaw.

Her scales seem to separate, the dark pink membrane between them fades and pales and the scales sink entirely into ordinary human skin.

The horns spin out into thin strands like a thread being unraveled and soon blonde hair cascades over the woman's shoulders and down further, to the top of her ass. Every single hair glossy as can be.

She's still tall as any WNBA player and built like a statue of some ancient mother goddess, all hips and curves and _very_ distracting breasts now that they look human.

"Kara soft now. Kara go. Lena go. Lena keep safe."

Lena groans.

"Well, ladies, it seems like I'll need an Uber. And a stop at a tent and awning store..." she jokes, seeming quite _affected_ by Kara's new shape.

"I'm guessing I can't borrow your vehicle?"

Alex snorts.

"Unless you want nine FBI agents pulling you over before you get on the 413, no, you can't."


	6. Lena II

**Lena Luthor**

Yesterday, Lena's calendar had three items on it for today.

Meeting One is with Lois Lane from the Daily Planet about some moronic thing her brother has done. They play at being enemies and Lois never fails to go after her in print with sadistic glee. Pair with those sharp, almost violet eyes of Lois' and Lena wants to find out how far Lois would push her before she needed the safeword. The eternally unattainable bachelorette of Metropolis and shatterer of one-percenter male egos has been famously a free woman since a breakup with some fellow named Clark that was so sad Lois called a fucking Luthor to second-guess the reasons she ended it. Times are tough if you're hitting up a Luthor to process your feelings.

Meeting Two is with Sam Arais, their adorably shy new CFO. She's brilliant and she's reason number two the company is afloat, reason number one being the insane rush of revenue for their energy-compatible hardshell cases for crystalline magical items. It's a training meeting but Lena has half a mind to have a call girl in the room and see if an afternoon of relentless oral worship might boost Sam's confidence to match her brilliance.

Meeting Three is with Jess to go over some initiatives and, no doubt, be dragged to Wailing Winds dance hail so Jess can try to sing some fawning girl into buying Lena a drink.

Now there's a fourth task. Navigate the day while being escorted by a giantess in a US Women's Team soccer shirt and gym shorts. Lena was desperate and that body only fits workout clothes for 400-pound men and tailored suits. The idea that she'll have to help Kara get a grownup wardrobe is not unwelcome and that's a whole other rabbit hole of self-doubt Lena has to go down.

It took three Uber drivers before Lena found one who would take them but didn't look at a tarp-wrapped and clearly dazed Kara in a way that suggested he had plans for the overly pliable blonde. It made Lena's blood sizzle. She installed the app an hour ago and she's already banned for a 2.5 rider score. She paid a ridiculous sum for him to wait at the End Zone clothing store, a Whataburger, and then help her carry the clothes and nine bags of hamburgers up to the front door where her doorman could help.

Kara actually _snarled_ at a man who wanted to slip between her and Lena at the cafe downstairs so he could talk to a friend at a nearby table. He slunk off as if he was facing the armored, fire-breathing beast Lena met this morning, not a gruff -- if positively massive -- blonde.

The sound wasn't much different, Lena supposes.

Lena has this poking feeling at the base of her neck. A sharp, tightly localized headache. The one she gets when something is going to go dreadfully wrong at work. It's rare but it's been impeccable. Seven out of nine times, something went completely tits-up. Even her therapist thinks it's worth digging into not because she's convinced Lena's psychic but because it clearly represents a trigger.

She'd blame it on the fact the coffee maker has been out of whack in the C-Suite parlor for most of the week or that someone panic-parked in her stall or some superstitious office drone bullshit but all those ended well.

The on-site caterer breezed through and pushed a sinful espresso into Lena's hand before she could boot up her newly replaced phone to email maintenance.

The panic-parker scurried out and apologized, begging not to be fired while Lena chuckled, shouldered her messenger bag, and reminded the poor dear that there was a spot next to her by the time Lena arrived. Lena was already parked.

L-Corp uses a four day, ten-hour workweek. Her most popular change as CEO. So really, it's TGIF since Fridays are off.

She can only blame herself for this coiling dread at the nape of her neck. 

A creature landed in her office, its every movement sizzling with sheer force and destruction. Chaos wrapped in skin. It presented itself. Offered itself, still as stone as if it feared rejection. Lena accepted it with a caress on what she now realizes was likely the underside of Kara's breasts, given the height differential. She can only blame herself. 

Jess is in a conference room doing damage control. Namely, using the full terror of her voice to read the termination letter to some cock-brained cretin from legal who spent half of the day yesterday trying to hit on an _igni sidhe_ negotiation specialist Sam poached from Obsidian Group while her paramour, a hot-tempered _stella sidhe_ from the IT department was busy hooking up the projector.

Lena has the goddamned common sense to let Rowan and Ashae be, even if two painfully beautiful, slender women with skin like milk and ears sharp as cut diamonds _do_ make the meetings visually pleasant and far less irritating. Especially if something breaks and Ashae pulls rank on the junior techs to see her partner. Lena's treated to the thick, crackling tension of a pair of elves -- famously hot-tempered and randy, even among faeries -- flirting without speaking to or even looking at each other.

During the standoff yesterday, she tried to get Sam to bet her $5 whether Rowan's fire magic or Ashae's command of gravity, kinetic force and cosmic rays would be the man's fatal instant karma.

Lena was astounded by their professionalism.

Ashae focused the rage she felt into a deft swipe of cosmos magic to levitate the loose HDMI cable back into place with an audible click and Rowan re-boiled her coffee with a fingertip before doing Lena's for good measure.

Jess opens the glass doors, wincing when she notices one of them wears a spiderweb crack from her voice. She snaps her fingers and points at the exit the man bolts like a spooked rabbit. She grins when she sees Lena. She lets her form shift back as she relaxes. becoming wispy and non-solid once more.

"Lena," Jess sighs. "I was so worried. I came in and I saw your office an-"

"If it makes you feel any better, it wasn't Lex."

Kara's growl is ended by a curt jab of the elbow that Lena instantly regrets. She may be pink and soft, deliciously so when Lena's hands touch her neck to gather up her hair but tense or feeling attacked, Kara hardens just as much as she did with the scales.

Cradling her injured arm and praying she didn't pop the joint out, Lena bites her tongue against the scream.

Kara's hands wind around the injury and something _incredibly_ cold happens to her palms, nulling every bit of sensation in Lena's right elbow. When she gently pops it back into the socket, Lena feels no more pain than she might smacking her shoe on the steps to her penthouse.

"Queen Lena no hurt. Queen Lena no hurt Queen Lena," Kara rumbles.

Jess quirks an elegantly plucked eyebrow at the pair. She does go to a spa, Jess confessed when Lena asked how in the blazes a woman who doesn't interact with solid matter got a haircut, manicure, or anything like that. Unlike a human, it's a punishing day because she has to focus on _existing_ for a whole afternoon so the stylists can groom her and then memorize the new form before shifting back.

"You made a friend, Miss Luthor," Jess teases. "Stop the presses! Shall I tell Lois she can cancel? Enough news in the world for one day?"

"Very funny," Lena snaps.

"Kara, Jess. Jess, Kara. _No hurt._ "

Lena grabs Kara's hand and Kara lets her guide it into a handshake position.

"Charmed," Jess trills with her voice so liquid and smooth that no human could ever match it.

"Kara, dear," Lena suggests. "Could you help me find a spot for you to sit?"

"Find."

Kara lumbers off.

Jess leans closer.

"Boss, why do you have a _pussy-whipped dragon_ with you?" Jess demands. "Chromatic, for fuck's sake. What's next? Going to walk in here with Kali or Ra or Thor swooning on your arm?"

"She is no-"

"She is too. The woman would have been on her knees for you fast enough to dent the floor."

"I was going to say she's not a dragon, actually."

Jess folds her arms.

"Uh-huh. You forget that I go far enough back that I met them, in person, both as a human and as a ghost before they died out. Lena, do you remember the night I told you about how I died?"

"Fire, right? Ming dynasty?"

"Zhu Youjian, last emperor of the Mings. He felt he needed more concubines."

"I had another arrangement. Worked for a sorcerer. I transcribed old Sanskrit texts into Han Chinese. The sorcerer I worked for and his apprentices are not going to be easy to unseat, not with an army. Several other of the people studying there were unmarried women who didn't really feel like getting married. Like me."

"Horny bastard sacrificed two of his _daughters_ and flayed a blood magic witch alive in the presence of an egg that was hatching. No incantation. Just a cloud of evil in the air. Made a chromatic hybrid. Gold with these awful black stains on the scales. It lived about four minutes before the wrongness that made it ripped it apart."

"It killed my mentor, who had taken me in when I was an orphan. Sent the white dragon we kept as a temple guard scurrying with a single roar. Whites have more instinctive magic than most. Move so fast they more or less teleport and they fly like hummingbirds they're so agile. Still can be caught in a big enough blast of flame. Don't blame Snowflower for cutting bait. Hope she's still out there."

"My master had taken down a mad bronze the summer before, whose rider had died. For some reason, it hadn't. Beijing Weyrs needed a mercy kill and they knew he could do it without the poor creature suffering. That monster was so much more powerful. It killed the greatest sorcerer in China, shattered layers of magical shields and wards he had up around the temple. Barely needed to flick a claw. Snatched me and the other targets up unharmed before we could piss ourselves. Four or five girls in each talon as it flew off. So yes, I know what that sort of raw power feels like on my skin."

"Zhu didn't have a court sorcerer, I suspect. He acted like magic just was with no need to do your homework so he never counted on the spell failing because of the sloppiness. That beast just _stopped holding together_ and came apart like a pinata in this huge could of guts and blood. Me and the other girls it was carrying off fell into the burning wreckage of the city. I was speared straight through. In the ass and out the teeth, Lena. Like a roast boar. Died instantly. Once I formed up as a ghost, I stood there and laughed for a minute, it was such a shock."

"If that thing's touch was being burned on the hand with a poker, Kara felt like walking naked into a forest fire. That's the scale."

"I didn't know that much," Lena admits. "I hope her being here didn't traumatize you."

Jess shrugs.

"Dying is a one-time deal and I was lucky enough to bounce back. It's pushing 600 years now, Lena. So it's really just a cool story to tell at parties."

Lena rolls her eyes.

"Honestly, I've been happiest as Jessica Huang since I came to California and _especially_ with you. Hard for me to make friends, too."

Lena opens her mouth to protest. Jess can make a friend and do so fast enough that she can offer Lena the new friend's drinking buddy as a consolation prize.

"I can _be friendly_ with the best of them. People watch for a couple of centuries and you can fake it until you make it. Completely different."

Lena sighs.

"I...I hate to do this Jess but can we do this over drinks tonight? I love learning more about my bestie but I should get into my office and figure out what's salvageable."

"Nothing," Jess sighs. "Well, nothing except your dad's chessboard and those pieces your birth mom carved him. Couple shot glasses. One of the chairs. Nothing practical. She really did a number. Took out three-quarters of the east wall in your office. The impact cracked every window and two of the girders in Arias'. The other hole, which I'm guessing was the exit wound?"

Lena nods.

"Caved in the entire ceiling. Kara, the destroyer of wiring, the scourge of retaining walls."

"Ah. Yes. The mess was not exactly intentional."

"I suspected. I have Ashae bringing up a new workstation and laptop for you ASAP based on yesterday's morning backup. I set this lobby to be by-appointment so you have some privacy."

"While I have you captive, tell me how you met," Jess suggests.

That is exactly the eerie, immaterial, entirely too toothy grin Jess flashes when she's trying to nudge Lena onto the dance floor.

Lena recounts the story, leaving out the more lurid parts this morning.

"Wow," Jess chortles. "You really fucked up, boss.

She slaps Lena's shoulder. "But hey, you broke your dry spell!"

"How so?"

"A dragon queen presented. To you. Not only that, a _chromatic_ dragon queen who has more magic in her handshake than a monster the size of a hill that killed thousands in four minutes had in its whole body. Pretty sure I felt a curse on Kara too, nasty one. Before you ask, I still know jack shit about actually using magic. I can take the notes and make sure diagrams are right but I can't cast so much as _crumplus paper baggus_. We ghosts are pretty good at feeling curses. Just not our own. Kind of like how humans can't smell if they have bad breath, I guess."

"What's presenting?"

"Make nest," Kara adds from the corner. She is arranging the couches and tables into a triangle with only a narrow opening. Like she wants Lena walled in for safety. She is lifting them one-handed without so much as a grunt. A bicycle messenger stands frozen in the elevator.

"Nest need two queen. One queen hatch. Go fly. Go find. Find queen."

Jess points at Kara.

"What she said. She hatched fully formed like some blues, whites, and reds do. Once she figured out which wing was which, she beelined for a worthy mate. Raw instinct. Kara came to you and waited. Waited to see if you found her sufficient. Like peacocks doing a mating dance."

"I touched her," Lena mumbles. "She stood there, close but not moving. In case I was afraid, I guess. I was curious, it was really dark. All I could really see is she was _roughly_ person-shaped. I was curious."

Jess snorts.

"You named the puppy, dear. The first thing the duckling saw. So forth, so on. Far as she's concerned, you're mated for life."

Lena frowns.

"Will she get more...ah..."

"Human? No idea," Jess admits. "Maybe. You'd need a couple of top-notch sorceresses and probably some background info on how she was made to even scratch that question."

"I only ever met that one chromatic," Jess admits. "Not many people ever met one period but it didn't go well. Didn't learn much."

"Dragons?"

Jess smiles.

"Dragons, I met. Dozens. China was always a good place for dragons. Like Woodstock for us humans, just watching it. Any dragon was Hendrix up on stage. Lots of folks kept sheep or goats, chickens, cows, pigs, whatever in special red fences farther from the house. For offerings. Sons people couldn't feed would go to work in Beijing, Hunan or Hong Kong Weyr. Big celebration each new year when they marched off."

"Larger than usual hatching season meant everybody subsisted on rice and plants for a while until the Weyrs could place the new ones elsewhere in the world and the herds recovered."

"Kara's not that abomination, that's for sure. Other than the power I felt when I touched her, nothing about her made me squicked out. She's obviously stable. You and I have been standing here far longer than it took that beast to go from birth to the moment it spontaneously burst open and sprayed its superheated guts into innocent people's houses."

Jess leans closer.

"How's the sex?"

"We didn't."

"Luthor!" Jess whines. "Why the hell not?"

"Because!" Lena snarls.

"Because..."

 _Because I was asleep. Guessing she would've wanted me if she wasn't aware how burned out I was and more focused on caring for me. She pampered me and then set about knocking up the others so that I would have hatchlings to teach. She talked about it like I was going to be queen. Of a nation or something._ _I wonder how big the largest weyr was?_

Lena pulls out her phone. Wikipedia's dedicated section, Dracopedia, seems to settle on the estimate that at its peak, what is now Malibu Weyr boasted nine hundred adults. Enough to cover the Americas during the founding, rise, and eventual fall of the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs. It shrunk with the arrival of Europeans. 

Christians are usually eager to cull any hatchlings once a thread-bearing meteor shower wraps up. That's why the ruins of European weyrs have bigger walls than any of the castles.

"Fuck. That is a lot of dragons," Lena mutters.

"Jess?" 

"Yes, boss?"

"Do we have the command keys to of Lex's spy satellites in my black box?"

Jess's fingers dance over the keypad on her desk safe, touching only long enough to trigger the button.

"Hmm. Looks like."

She fishes out one of the titanium shelled USB drives that contain backdoor viruses to hijack the satellites Lex made for the CIA.

"Soon as there's a fly-by, I want to know what Malibu Weyr looks like right this instant. Caldera, any caves you can get a peek at. All of it. Use lots of angles. I want a three-dimensional model."

"I'll send it to your private email when I have it."

Lena goes to squeeze Jess' shoulder, forgetting she doesn't work like that.

Jess chortles.

"Shoo. Just let me know what kind of meat your new forever girl likes, okay? I'll need to get a pile of it. Just because she's person _sized_ doesn't mean she doesn't have the appetite of a blue. Same oomph, same munchies."

"The government ought to hire you for your knowledge of dragons. You just rattled off more than anyone but the Doctors Danvers know about them."

"You pay better," Jess teases.

Lena makes a note to unilaterally increase Jess' salary after lunch.


	7. Alex III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TERMS:
> 
> Epigenetic = traits that are expressed in a life form because of the possibility in the genes encouraged the environment, for example, the chemical mixture in the mother's womb.  
> (not a perfect description. the author is a weirdo, not a geneticist)

**Alex Danvers**

The blonde -- Chastity, ironically -- is fine. She is exhausted but that's to be expected. Schoolteacher at Malone Middle. Which, if Alex is being honest, explains damn near everything. Those teachers have to be ready to keep up with and support and emphasize with twelve-year-olds, basically a random-emotion generator that never goes below twelve out of ten. The world's best middle school teacher and the world's least stable, jumpiest, most mood swinging, agitated lunatic are separated only by the fact the teacher does it for a good cause can reset with a bubble bath and a massage. Why wouldn't she be able to go from rollercoaster-type shrieking in mid-flight to cackling when she was dumped on the pillows to digging her nails into Kara's wing-roots, seeking the tender spots between scales to get Kara to spill to shoving her ass in the air hoping for more.

Alex hadn't really meant to give pelvic exams in a foreclosed warehouse with cheap-ass exam gloves Vasquez had to run to Walgreens for, hand sanitizer, and soap. She had little choice. If these girls are injured, legally they can't stay with Kara.

She has this weird hunch that if she took her to a full blown OB/GYN clinic, they would tell her Charity doesn't have tearing or bruising or any of the hallmarks of rough sex, consensual or otherwise. She's still unusually open and dripping these marble-like black somethings the size of peas but she didn't seem tender. The more Charity gushed about Kara's...anatomy...the more it became clear that there were safeguards. The bulb on the tail she fucked her with was so smooth her hands slid right off, even dry, Charity purred. Slipperiest thing she ever felt. Alex has encountered tricker's spirits grease spells before and they _do_ make things slicker than any human-made lubricant ever devised. Slick enough it really pisses off 3M chemists when they try and keep up. So _hot_. Kara let her adjust until it felt like a bubble bath from the inside, Charity claimed. Slick enough not to scrape, hot enough to relax every muscle anywhere near it. Packed full of semen laced with what Alex thinks might be narcotic, quite frankly.

Charity is acting like someone who got into _the good stuff_ at one of the new herb and shroom parties that were just legalized. Drowsy, dopey, willing to down a package of Hostess snack cakes like popcorn. That could also be someone who had a long, multiorgasmic, mostly sleepless night, she supposes.

Something occurs to Alex.

"Do you need to call anyone? Like your principal?"

Charity shakes her head.

"Vacation," she yawns. "M'gonna have to talk Kara into letting me go back to my kiddos."

"She will," she adds. "I know it."

"Why'd she take you?"

"Huh?" Charity mumbles. "Oh. Probably because the teachers on the rest of my floor were shrieking their heads off and I was standing there going 'huh'. Skipped Williams though and she _just_ got engaged. Like, three weeks ago. I sort of went to Kara, at least those first few feet."

"So she tried others?"

"Oh, yeah. I think she would rip a wall out, _be dangerous_ and then sort of wait to see what I'd do."

"Hey," Charity teases, nudging Alex with her bare heel.

"Yeah?"

"What's your girl's name? The way your eyes bugged out when I talked about the oral, and that thing you do where you don't stare harder than most men _would stare_ makes me suspicious. "

"Maggie," Alex sighs, unable to hide her full smile.

"I knew it. Vamp. Just an FYI but your lipgloss is purple but your lips are smeared with a shade of red they don't sell in stores. Teensy little canine teeth, big old gaps where the old double-troubles slide out. Paired fangs, right? Two to a corner?"

Alex nods.

"Vazka."

"Huh. Grooved, for a better hold and slower drain. Just like Hunter in my class. Poor kid's parents are shit. Can't explain why being nice to Madison and saying hi gives him a migraine because I can't explain the urge to glamour. And I can read all about vampire breeds and their abilities spiking in puberty all I want. But I can't help him. Might need you to step in for him, if you're willing."

"Think about it."

_Figure out if it helps or hurts Operation Maggie-Maybe-Considering-Kids._

"All right, Alex the ginger vamp. Tell Maggie I said hi."

The redhead is named Slynki -- had it legally changed -- and she's the sort of stripper that is in it for the long haul. Taking dance classes before she ages out so she can make a living. Getting a loan for the plastic surgery rather than using her tips, so that she can get high-end, non-silicone ones from elves and half-demon flesh crafters. Implants that Alex wouldn't have guessed until she was offered a 'hands-on product demo' with a grin and a leading stare from dark blue eyes.

She's in even better shape than Charity. Not as much room inside her, she explained. The same thing that makes the tail slick means that it _can_ change shape, transfiguration spell or something. Amazing given that it's clearly some glass or clear crystal and they make things like remote speaking amulets from quartz because crystal doesn't crack or bend when charged with magic. Then again, the average mage-crafting crystal is pastel blue, green or purple not charcoal gray and doesn't have an eternal fire at the core. Got the first part it in her mouth, even, Slynki preened and this lunatic borrowed Alex's pen and wrote that down on her thigh as a to-do goal. 

That really made Alex curious.

"May I?"

She points to a drizzle of black marbles and slick, sweet-smelling gel between Slynki's breasts. It hasn't dissolved. Probably kept closer to body temp by being pinned between.

"It's ah, still intact. Need a sample," Alex mumbles.

Slynki arches her back, offering.

"You're cuter than that closeted tech founder," Slynki teases. "I'd flirt with her for free so I don't know why she thinks I won't ask for a ride home after she puts a couple $50s and stock options in my thong..."

"That's kinda oversharing, Syl."

"Suit yourself."

Alex takes a few of the spheres in one palm and holds them up to the sunlight.

Empty. Nothing but some crystals inside.

The sample she took off Chastity had tiny, pale lumps of tissue in them. Embryos, or so Alex thinks. Or partial ones at least. Explains how crossbreeding might work. The materials are all dragon, maybe even clones of Kara. Color is thought to be recessive or epigenetic, anyway. Maybe the uterine environment is where then mother carrying it makes her finishing touches.

"These ones were..."

"That's runoff from down the hatch yea. Actually, I'd kill for that Gatorade but I'm good besides."

_Sugary gel. Thousands of little nodules filled with high-protein goop but infertile. Like chicken eggs._

"Holy fuck," Alex mumbles.

"These are _food._ "

"No shit?" Sylnki laughs.

"Yeah, just little lumps of protein in basically corn syrup. have to analyze it but...maybe a liquid diet? Supplement? Humans can't process all meat diets and too many barbecues mean you'd get obese enough to be risky if you ever did get pregnant."

"Goddamn," Slynki grumbles. "Should've swallowed the second time."

Alex pushes the Gatorade across and staggers over to the last victim. Goldie. Probably not her real name but she's saved enough homeless people from whatever went bump in that night in that exact neighborhood to know that she shouldn't press.

Needs some antipsychotics but she's good besides. Didn't fuck, she told Alex, just got marathon oral from a tongue that could curl against her clit and reach deep enough to rim her cervix at the same time. She thinks maybe Kara wasn't sure she was okay.

Alex uploads the prescription to the DEO so that no one knows the details. Requests an exam with Dr. Hamilton. The injection form so that Goldie gets the right dose and can't hoard or self-adjust the dose.

Vasquez is on the phone with J'onn.

She hangs up and comes over.

"What's the move, Vas?"

"J'onn talked to everybody except the president. The Joint Chiefs of Staff's seer felt a pull. Didn't think it meant anything but it lines up on time."

"Fuck," Alex mumbles. "In DC?"

"In NORAD, Alex. Under a goddamned mountain."

"What's the plan?"

"We've got the first dragon in ages, she set off tinglies maybe as far as Saint Louis unless we get more reports. This is maybe a restart to the Malibu Weyr, a stupid powerful consultant or even an ally. Apology for a terror attack we can't pin on Lex. Besides, she's harmless. Probably. Completed her nest and settling in. Orders are to help her."

"Wanna build some shitty DIY tables and couches?" Vasquez teases. "See if we can get an electrician to hook up the power on the lower floors?"

"Really, I'd rather go play dodge-the-glare with a drunk gorgon than assemble that _glk'vak_ but I didn't get to pick."

"That's the spirit! Told you you'd like that language course on Infernal. They have the best swears." 

Vasquez pops the leatherman and the mini-toolkit off the bandolier they use for non-bullet equipment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author has worked in a middle school. Those teachers are good at their jobs in part because they can flip from the pissed off kid to the weeping kid to the overactive kid in half an hour, and connect with each.


	8. Lena III

**Lena Luthor**

The moment three caterers come back with _piles_ of pork ribs and strip steaks, all of it uncooked, Kara's head snaps up from where she had settled into Lena's lap. Her deep whine into the pleats of Lena's skirt not only rumbles into Lena's skin, teasing and rattling her bones, it makes her gut flip and clench. Her pulse is fluttering against her ribs like a parrot that wants out of its cage.

Kara is twitchy. Kara is unnerved by the human world. Why wouldn't she be? None of this existed when she was laid into that egg, when she grew slowly and dreamed in fits and starts inside a transparent shell hard as concrete. Not steel buildings, not electricity, not computers. Whatever memories of language and draconic culture she inherited from her bloodline? Whatever made her fluent in draconic and having least a start of English hours after birth? it didn't cover this.

Kara groans again and Lena's mind is bubbling with a hot, acrid feeling of _irritation_ that she soon realizes this is Kara's unhappiness and her urge to protect, to calm, to be the one soothing and making her Kara happy.

 _My Kara? Why?_ Lena wonders. _I hardly know her. Don't even know what she is...my friend? My mate? My queen?_

Rolling that last thought in her head, hefting it to test the feel and the weight, Lena decides on it. Thinking of Kara as her queen, her partner in some sense, makes the hammering, crazy beat of her heart slow. 

At any rate, the grin spreading on Kara's face means Jess is never allowed to quit her job.

"Do you want to shift?" Lena asks.

"No know sh-i-ft."

Lena sighs.

"Make self big. Make self hard."

Jess cackles.

"Really?" Lena snaps.

"Really."

"Just for that," Lena hisses. "You are going to find a man named Dylan Haufsen. He publishes language books. Works in Australia. Melbourne University, I think. So get going. I want an electronic copy of his primers in my email by sunset. Otherwise, I'm sending you on administrative leave for a _month._ Disabling your keycard."

"You wouldn't!"

"Some people would love to be paid to sit around the house."

Jess's face falls.

"Some people don't only have friends at work. I'll get right on it, boss. you can use your office to cook lunch," Jess suggests. "Two walls missing. Nothing to burn."

\-----

Watching Kara shift takes the breath from her. Stalls it high in her throat.

She shifts back to her full form and _oh_ but how the scales closing over her breasts, small and intricately jointed but _firm_ to Lena's curious fingers make Lena consider some things she'd rather not the tabloids find out about. She's survived enough bad press to fill libraries. Being labeled a monster-fucker might be fatal to her and the company's image.

Lena can heft and lift and squeeze but it's _hard work_ to knead and squeeze. Only the nipples are broad domed and soft. They shiver and peak just as quickly as Lena's own and that draws a rumbling noise from deep in her dragon's ribcage. A soft growl from between the manifested miracle of Kara's ribs, her sinew, her flesh. Maybe she doesn't need those spring-loaded hand exercisers anymore. Kara looks down at her with a crooked, fanged smile and lets Lena indulge her curiosity without pushing for more. Only the agitated flick of her tail gives away Kara's arousal. It's as if she knows how the sweet woodsmoke musk of Kara's panting breath and the salt and ginger tang wafting off her scales is filling Lena's nose, swamping her senses. It's as if Kara knows it's only a matter of time.

"Lena back," Kara tells her, pushing Lena gently behind her with a hand on the lower belly. A palm that that spans Lena's waist and fingers that splay from hipbone to hipbone.

"No want hurt."

Kara arranges the freshly-sanitized steel bucket Jess found and tosses a rack of pork ribs towards it in a lazy underhand arc. Before it reaches halfway, she breathes a single momentary puff of paler, redder flame than Lena's seen her use. Lower temperature, she supposes. The meat lands in the sauce pool at the bottom with a sizzling splat. Kara repeats and repeats before switching to the steaks, rendering them sizzling and probably medium-well before they fall into the other can.

Inside twenty minutes, Kara has a spread any knuckle-dragging backyard barbecuer would weep over.

She cuts the cans open with a fingertip after breathing on it and the steel gives way without resistance, leaving a red-hot line at the seam.

Jess had prepared a small card table back in the lobby, piled with plates. Nothing like a Luthor-catered event but enough.

Kara arranges a full rack of ribs and an impressive sirloin in front of Lena.

"Queen Lena eat. Must strong. Kara wait. Kara eat after mate. Holy."

Lena shivers.

This being so mighty she suspects they don't have the terminology to describe it is deferring to Lena like a low-ranking wolf pup waiting for the alpha female to have her fill. Worse, it's part of a ritual of some kind. Seems dragons have a religion after all.

"Show. Show how Queen Lena eat," she tells Kara. "Teach."

Kara nods.

"Queen Kara watch. Learn."

Lena takes the knife and cuts off a slice of sirloin, tiny one of the sort Lillian wouldn't chastise her for.

"Now go Kara."

Kara looks at the knife and decides against it. It would look like a sewing needle in her hands. A short talon has emerged from each of her fingers like a cat's claw, slipping out from some cavity behind her blunt nails. The inner serrations are so small that the shiny black claw is _glittering_ in the sunlight as it catches different tiny facets. She spears two into one end of the sirloin and uses another to slice a strip off.

"Big," Lena complains. "Need to make small."

Kara puts the strip in her mouth and it vanishes amidst three pairs of backward-curving fangs that bracket blunt incisors. The fire lighting Kara's throat from behind lets her see a row of sharklike teeth just behind them. Not so much rows of teeth as one row with three layers to it. Lena wonders how the inside of Kara's lips taste. How far she could safely get her tongue inside? Could she only flick in, lick the very edges? Only _tease_ Kara rather than really diving in? Really claiming?

Perhaps that's what the human form is for. Makeouts.

Kara tries again, cutting a piece a human could at least handle. If they were starving.

"Good," Lena tells Kara. "Kara learn."

Watching Kara spear and swallow meat makes Lena's mind wander. Watching her lick juices from her fingers after retracting the claw makes Lena think of the opulent mess of pillows, the nubile women brought to serve Kara and breed her children, the mad, primitive glee with which they ate what Kara fed them and fucked like nothing made them happier than being _good enough_ to be Kara's.

This is how the first cavewoman to _ask_ for sex rather than just be taken by force must have felt. Lena is sure of it.

As they eat, Lena taps out an email to Jess.

The Luthor, Connelly, Kane and Cale Realty firm exists for a goddamned reason and if the bastard daughter of Jane Connelly and Lionel Luthor can't get Veronica Cale's attention, she's just buying them out. Cale is rich and powerful but she must know that Connelly had no other children and no husband and the estate is something Lena's lawyers could plunder by the day after tomorrow. Including the founding partner's chair.

Cale is a shark. Dangerous as an enemy. Mayors clamor for her newest development to happen in _their_ city. Senators cringe when she donates to their opponents. The governors of California and Texas call her back _in meetings_ to see what she needs. 

Lena is a motherfucking _Luthor_ and that opens up a level of influence and resources no other family in America enjoys.

How hard can it be to snap up a warehouse that's sat empty for thirty years?

\-----

Ever the miracle worker, Jess struts in with a flash drive before 3pm. Lena had just wrapped up with Sam, assuring her that it wasn't the _work_ she was doing, it was that Sam would be steamrolled by male execs if she couldn't punch back, take up space and make them think her dick was bigger than theirs. Sam the ever-adorkable protege took handwritten notes as Lena outlined how she does that.

Lena plugs it in.

"Perfect."

"What are those, anyway?" Jess asks.

"Dr. Haufsen specializes in this remote tribe. They cast out children they don't approve of. Not fit enough. Slower growing, neurodivergent, et cetera. Other tribes pick them up, of course but times are tough. They started ending up in refugee centers. The Halaawi language is _massively_ different from any language on Earth."

Lena clicks a button and the pages on screen flip. The child runs as the semi-transparent pages flick past.

"A flipbook," Jess murmurs.

Lena nods.

"A flipbook that shows 'run' so that the social workers can learn the Halaawi word for it and the child can learn 'run'. Once they nail that, they can do actual phrasebooks."

"Brilliant."

Lena chews the inside of her cheek for a moment.

"Send it to the printshop. Have them rush three copies for me. One mailed to my penthouse, one on my desk before I leave, one on file here. Do a run of 10,000 or something and donate to local schools with second-language programs. Put it on my slush fund card for the L-Corp foundation."

Jess nods.

"Sounds good."

"Anything else?"

"If you want to drink, you'll probably have to come over to _her place,_ " Lena jokes.

"Oh, you bet your pale ass, Luthor. You do _not_ get out of our odd-numbered-day drinking games just because you're falling for a dragon. Shoot me the location and I'll there with smoke-brandy and shadow-wine for me and scotch for you. Say, seven?"

"Sounds good."


End file.
